412: Chapter 412 Give Me Three Days

The secretary led him to the head seat directly at the front of the conference table.

A microphone sat at the head seat, next to a freshly poured cup of hot tea that was still steaming.

Su Mingyuan sat down at the head seat.

He didn't sit down with deliberate gentleness or force; he simply pulled out the chair naturally, sat down, and pulled it forward slightly.

Yet this simple action drew the gazes of several people in the front row simultaneously.

However, the reaction from the back rows was quite different.

Some stared at Su Mingyuan for a long while, their brows deeply furrowed.

Others leaned over to whisper to those next to them. Their voices were kept very low, but a few words still drifted out at the end: "...So young... Who is he?"

Tycoon Xu straightened up from the back of his chair, leaned forward slightly, and stared at Su Mingyuan across two rows of people for about five or six seconds before turning to say something to the secretary beside him.

The secretary shook his head, clearly not recognizing him either.

To many, Su Mingyuan was a state-protected figure, and not many people knew of him.

Su Mingyuan paid no attention to those gazes.

He reached out to pull the microphone in front of him, adjusted its angle, and then lightly rapped his knuckles on the table twice.

Tap, tap.

The sound wasn't loud, but the buzzing in the conference room quieted down within three seconds.

Over a hundred pairs of eyes locked onto him.

Without introducing himself or exchanging pleasantries, Su Mingyuan spoke directly.

"I read your joint letter on the plane. I understand your difficulties. But before you speak, let me listen first. Everyone, please keep it under three minutes. State only your most urgent issues, and do not repeat what others have already said."

His voice wasn't loud and his pace was somewhat fast, as if he were discussing something he had already figured out how to handle, and was merely going through the motions.

"Who will go first?"

There was a silence of two seconds.

Tycoon Xu was the first to raise his hand.

Without waiting for Su Mingyuan to call on him, he stood up directly from his chair, scraping its legs against the floor.

"I'll ask a question first."

Tycoon Xu's voice was sharp, carrying an anger that had been suppressed for days.

"Regarding the SWIFT decoupling, does the country actually have a contingency plan? How many of us here knew about this beforehand? Out of the eleven companies under my name, overseas business accounts for sixty percent, and it all stopped overnight. Thirty-seven thousand employees are waiting to be paid, and the money in our accounts can only last eighteen days. What do we do after eighteen days? Who can tell me what to do?"

His tone rose sharply when he said 'eighteen days'.

"I'm not here to complain. I am asking—is the state actually prepared? Or did you simply not expect the Bald Eagle to go this far?"

After speaking, Tycoon Xu did not sit down. He leaned his hands on the table and stared at Su Mingyuan.

Su Mingyuan looked at him without responding.

Beside him, Ma Huateng coughed lightly and took over the conversation.

"Old Xu, sit down."

Tycoon Xu glared at Ma Huateng but sat back down anyway.

Ma Huateng pushed up his glasses, his voice an octave lower than Tycoon Xu's.

"Group Leader Su, let me share a few figures. After the SWIFT decoupling, the loss rate of our company's overseas revenue channels on the first day was one hundred percent—not a partial loss, but completely wiped out. Our CIPS backup channel can theoretically cover some clients in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, but the actual utilization rate is less than seven percent. The reason is simple: the counterparty banks have not connected to CIPS, or they have but are unwilling to use this channel because they fear secondary sanctions from the Bald Eagle."

He paused.

"My personal judgment is that this is not a short-term issue. The Bald Eagle will not add us back to SWIFT within three months, nor even in six months or a year. If their goal is to construct a new financial framework that excludes Great Xia, then this time window could be three to five years."

Ma Huateng closed his laptop, took off his glasses, and wiped the lenses.

"As for how many of us here can survive three to five years, I am not optimistic."

Once he finished speaking, the air in the conference room grew palpably heavier.

People in the back rows began to whisper among themselves.

Some were sighing. Others flipped a page of the Materials in their hands back and forth, as if they had read it countless times but still couldn't believe the numbers on it.

Su Mingyuan sat at the head seat, his hands flat on the table, not interrupting.

He listened as Tycoon Xu and Ma Huateng finished speaking, and then listened to the statements of over a dozen people behind them—some in electronics OEM, some in textile export, some in bulk commodity trade, and some in cross-border logistics.

The specific situation described by each person was different, but the core issue pointed to the same place: money could not be collected, goods could not be shipped, and the capital transmission chain was broken.

For over thirty minutes, Su Mingyuan did not say a single word.

His silence began to make some people anxious.

After explaining his situation, a boss from the back row who exported auto parts couldn't help but add a line.

"Group Leader... Su, I don't know your position or rank, but we didn't come here to make reports. We need answers."

Su Mingyuan raised his head and swept his gaze across the room.

Hundreds of faces.

Some he recognized, some he didn't.

Some had shaken hands with him at the thousand-person conference two years ago, while others were meeting him for the first time today.

These people managed the largest sector of private enterprise in Great Xia's economic landscape. Their combined workforce exceeded fifty million people, and the upstream and downstream of their associated industrial chains involved nearly three hundred million jobs.

Now, these people sat before him, their facial expressions varied, but the look in their eyes was much the same—they were all waiting for an explanation.

Su Mingyuan picked up the cup of tea in front of him, which had stopped steaming, took a sip, and set it down.

Then he picked up the microphone.

"Are you finished?"

The conference room fell silent.

"Then it's my turn to speak."

Su Mingyuan stood up, his chair sliding back half a foot.

Standing at the head seat, he leaned both hands on the edge of the table, his gaze sweeping from left to right. He looked at each person in the first three rows one by one, then looked over their heads at the faces in the back whose names he couldn't call.

"I have heard your situations clearly. Capital chains, orders, raw Materials, settlement channels—I have noted all of these issues."

He let go of the table edge and straightened his back.

"I won't tell you a month, nor will I say a week."

He paused. The conference room was so quiet that the hum of the air conditioner vents could be heard.

"Three days at most. Within three days, I will let everyone see a solution."

After these words fell, the conference room fell silent for about two seconds.

Then, a man in a gray suit on the left side of the third row let out a laugh. It wasn't a mocking laugh, but rather the kind from someone who simply couldn't hold it in.

"Three days?"

"Is he serious?"

"The SWIFT issue can be resolved in three days? The international settlement system can be bypassed in three days?"

More and more voices rose from the back rows, like a handful of gravel thrown onto a calm water surface, the ripples expanding outward ring by ring.

Ma Huateng opened his mouth slightly, then closed it again.

Elder Ren did not move from beginning to end. His hands remained folded on the table, his back straight, his gaze resting on Su Mingyuan, showing no emotion.

A man in the middle of the fifth row stood up.

Su Mingyuan did not know him, but judging by his attire and where he sat, he should be someone on the list of the three thousand large private enterprises.

He was in his fifties, with very short hair and obvious sunburn spots on his face, looking like someone who spent years on construction sites.

"Group Leader Su, my surname is Zhou, and I do steel structure exports. I don't doubt your sincerity, but I've been in this industry for thirty-one years, and I've heard too many words like this."

His voice wasn't loud, but it was steady.

"Never mind three days—if this kind of thing can be resolved in three months, I, Zhou Yongfu, will be the first to kneel and apologize to you. If it can be resolved in three years, everyone sitting here would have to burn high incense."

He took a step forward and stood in the aisle.

"I have over four thousand people under me, with the furthest group on a construction site in Nigeria, Africa. Not a single cent of the money over there can be remitted back. My workers are having trouble even feeding themselves. In three days' time, I hope the government can produce a solution!"

Su Mingyuan looked at him without replying.

Zhou Yongfu waited for a few seconds, then bent down to pick up his jacket draped over the chair and slung it over his arm.

"In three days, if I don't see anything, I will bring my four thousand people to the capital."

With that, he turned and walked out.

The conference room fell silent once again.

"Everyone, the meeting is adjourned. In three days, I will give you all a satisfactory answer."